In this series, we talk to some of our past brides to discuss tips and tricks for planning a wedding, their style and all the details leading up to their big day.

KEREN CODE

"If you take care to choose amazing suppliers, the day will pretty much take care of itself."

THE PROPOSAL

Craig and I have been together for 12 years and live in Yorkshire in the UK, where we work from home running our chauffeuring and wedding car business. We're pretty laid back and like nothing more than chilling out with our two cats, watching a film and consuming crazy amounts of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

A lot of my family have moved over to NZ, and in 2015 we flew across for our first visit. That holiday fell on the month of our 10 year anniversary and Craig (helped by my lovely parents) surprised me with an emotional proposal, in front of a waterfall in a beautiful private valley.

THE PLANNING

THE INITIAL STAGES

We started thinking about the wedding location and potential dates as soon as we got back home. I like to be organised and started detailed planning on Excel pretty quickly, whereas Craig has a more 'go with the flow' attitude. Together we found a good balance, and he reminded me to chill if I was taking things a little too seriously!

STYLE

The owners and chief of the land of the valley where Craig proposed, gave us their blessing to have our ceremony there which was incredible. Saying our vows there made it so much more special and significant, and most of our inspiration came from the olive trees and wild flowers in the valley. I found images on Pinterest and Instagram that reflected our intended relaxed and natural style and pulled together a few mood boards - these were so helpful when communicating the style to our vendors from abroad.

VENDORS

Capturing the day and time spent with family was really important to us, so looking for our photographer was the very first thing we did. I found Courtney Horwood Photography through searching online and completely fell in love with her style. And it was then through Courtney's Facebook we discovered Louisiana Lucy's gorgeous benches. With the exception of our celebrant and caterer who are friends of my parents, we chose most of our vendors by scrolling through our existing suppliers' social profiles and looking for people they had collaborated with before or featured.We made sure to select vendors who were quick to reply and made planning via email easy, and those that were on our wavelength style-wise - they would then hopefully enjoy working with us too!

BUDGET

We set a budget from the beginning and stuck to it pretty strictly - I think having such an intimate wedding made that part easier for us.And only a small amount of our overall budget was for the actual wedding day itself; we always had the attitude that the wedding is just one day, whereas we were also flying over to spend time with family and have an awesome honeymoon! We put the majority of our budget into lovely places to stay and fun activities - prioritising a few weeks of amazing memories, over one day of a grand wedding.

ADVICE

Try to put together a wedding mission statement before you get into planning - think about what you both really want from the big day and write it into a short sentence. Having this little sentence to refer back to is so useful when making decisions. It stops you getting carried away, being swayed by opinions, and the day becoming something you didn't originally hope for.

Remember that your wedding is exactly that - yours. Enjoy the planning and finding little ways to make it unique and your own.

The day of - If you take care to choose amazing suppliers, the day will pretty much take care of itself. It goes fast, so always be in the moment, and remember that ultimately you're there to marry your best friend.